1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a distribution apparatus, a distribution method, and a computer program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a monitoring system is proposed to monitor an operation state of a peripheral apparatus (e.g., an image forming apparatus). A distribution server is also proposed to distribute the firmware to image forming apparatuses.
If an image forming apparatus fails in an environment of the monitoring system, the system detects the failure based on failure information (e.g., an error code, an alarm code, and a jam code) transmitted from the image forming apparatus and dispatches a service engineer to the location (i.e., setup place) of the image forming apparatus.
According to another conventional technique, a distribution server can distribute a maintenance-use moving image to an image forming apparatus so that a service engineer can browse the distributed image during a maintenance work for the apparatus. As discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-310192, there is a conventional system that determines whether a failure of an image forming apparatus is serious or not and, if the failure is not serious, distributes a moving image required for a repair work to the failed device, thereby preventing a service engineer from being dispatched unnecessarily.
Further, there is a conventional distribution server that divides the content of a moving image into a plurality of portions and distributes each divided portion of the image to a terminal. For example, as discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-184472, for the purpose of reducing the load of a server or a network, a terminal is allowed to download a partial content of the moving image beforehand and can acquire the rest of the entire content instantaneously from the server when the terminal displays the moving image.
As described above, in a case where a failure occurs in an image forming apparatus located on the client side, it is desired that the distribution server distributes a maintenance-use moving image (or a help-use moving image) to the failed image forming apparatus to enable a user of the client side to fix the failed portion of the apparatus.
However, when such a moving image is distributed, a worker is required to wait and stay at a place adjacent to an operation panel of the image forming apparatus where the worker can browse the moving image. Moreover, even when the distributed moving image is displayed on the operation panel of the image forming apparatus, the worker may not be able to view the image displayed on the operation panel during a maintenance (or restoration) work if the scale of the image forming apparatus is huge and the portion to be repaired is far from the operation panel.
If a worker turns off a power source of an image forming apparatus for a repair work, the worker cannot view the moving image to be displayed on the operation panel.
According to the above-described conventional techniques, a worker may have substantially no chance to view a moving image that instructs a work to be performed for a device (e.g., an image forming apparatus).